


Rocks

by Ramasi



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-23
Updated: 2014-01-23
Packaged: 2018-01-09 18:26:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1149333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ramasi/pseuds/Ramasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam and Joe hang out in Joe's bar and decide to go on a vacation (sometime or other).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rocks

**Author's Note:**

> Indiscretions is my favourite episode. That's all there is to this.

"Joe!" Adam said very brightly, sauntering in; Joe followed his progress towards the bar with a mixture of caution and relief; last time he'd seen Adam had been almost a week ago, when Joe had unceremoniously thrown him out after he had proposed a game of poker. He'd begun to wonder if the immortal was offended.

It was in the late morning; Joe hadn't been open for long, and there was only a single other costumer present at the moment, nursing his third non-alcoholic beer in a corner of the room.

"Draft beer?" he asked, when Adam sat on one of the stools by the bar and put his elbows on the table. "Isn't it a little early for that?" he added, even as he got a glass ready.

"Aren't those kinds of questions bad for business?" Adam asked back, sounding honestly curious, and smiled when the full glass was put in front of him; he didn't take it, just put his hands around it as if to cool them. "How have you been?"

"I've been right here," Joe answered, somewhat pointedly. Somewhere along the line, he'd stopped being used to his immortal friends disappearing on and off from his life.

"M-hm," Adam said absently, staring at the row of bottles behind Joe. "Great. Hey," he added, turning his attention back to him, looking nervous. "You remember Morgan Walker?"

Did he _remember_?

"It's hard to forget."

"We should." Adam looked back up at the bottles. "Do that again sometime."

" _You_ want to fight another immortal?"

"Not _that_ part," Adam protested, with a disgusted grimace. "But – the road trip was fun."

"It wasn't a road trip," said Joe vividly, irritated even as part of him relished the chance to talk about it; "fun" really wasn't the word he would have used. "It was you running out of gas during an abduction." Which, in all fairness, was _not_ a very fair thing to say, but –

"I wasn't abducting you!" Adam protested, affronted. "I was saving your life!"

"You mean you were saving your life?"

"That too," said Adam, complacent. "We really were a great team, you know."

Joe frowned at Adam's guileless smile.

"I'm not hiding anything from you," he said.

"No, I know," said Adam, exaggeratedly heartfelt.

"What do you want, Adam?" Joe asked; not that he wasn't glad the oldest immortal was back to visiting, and apparently harbouring fond memories of their time together, but this had to be leading somewhere.

"You think I didn't mean any of it?" Adam asked, endlessly soft.

"Mean what?"

"The bond between us. The friendship."

Joe briefly turned away before glancing back up. He'd deserved it, but that didn't mean he didn't get to be angry. At himself, among other things, because it had gotten under his skin to frightening amounts, even allowing for the extreme situation; and really, in retrospective...

"How long are you going to find this funny?" he snapped.

Adam grinned happily, which Joe supposed was a way of saying _a very long time_. Maybe after the first two thousand years you ran out of new jokes and had to stretch out the ones you got to infinity.

"You know," Adam said, taking his hands off the glass at last to gesture around, "I _was_ reaching about Incitatus, because we're not _that_ close, but otherwise –"

"What do you want?" Joe asked again, interrupting him.

"About that road trip..." Adam began, and Joe was beginning to have an inkling where this was going; safer ground, too.

"There's someone after you, isn't there?"

"N –" Adam started, then broke off, the cheer replaced by worry. "Is there?"

Joe narrowed his eyes.

" _I_ don't know."

"Of course not," Adam said hastily. "But if there was particularly high or dangerous immortal activity in, say, the Bretagne, you would tell me, wouldn't you? No details, just yes or no would do."

"What do you want in the Bretagne?"

"Castles. Arthurian legends. Rocks. The sea." He paused, unsure. "We can do something fancier if you want. Italy, perhaps? But I know you've seen that already, so I thought maybe we could just..." He trailed off.

"You –" Joe began, and then didn't know how to continue, because this really did sound like – what, a vacation? He wondered if maybe Adam had found out that he was due to die very soon, and he himself just didn't know yet, and this was Adam's conclusion. Rocks. "What the hell, Methos?" The immortal gave no answer. "Last time you went on a trip like that, you took Alexa."

Adam looked down, drew in breath through his teeth, and actually took a gulp of beer. Joe had to admit that this hadn't been very tactful, but he'd really have liked to know what was going on; anyway, he'd loved Alexa too, he was allowed.

"Yes," Adam said, very slowly, and glanced up at him, biting his lips, _cautious_ , or perhaps a show of cautiousness, and Joe suddenly had a thought he certainly hadn't entertained until now.

"You can't be serious."

Adam smiled, hopeful and unassuming, and cocked his head to the side.

"You don't like me?"

Joe's almost gaped, and how was he supposed to answer this one? He'd found Methos fascinating long before meeting him; he'd liked Adam Pierson well enough the few times he'd come across him: friendly and funny, not unintelligent, and not bad-looking, in a simple way Joe vaguely noticed and then brushed aside with ease, on par for the course, because ignoring occasionally perking interest in men was just more practical in most situations; but a little awkward, and almost embarrassingly bad at making the things he did or said seem interesting even when they were. Pretty forgettable, truth be told. (Adam Pierson was an asshole.)

Meeting the real Methos – properly, that was – had inevitably been a disappointment in some way; who could stand to be compared to their legend? But mostly it had been amazing: he was much more real than Joe had ever expected, for one. Years as a Watcher, got you used to seeing people who might have been story-book characters just as well as shreds of the past spring to life, all there in the reality of twentieth century life, but Methos was something else. If Joe had been fourteen, he would have called it a crush.

"Don't you think I'm a little old for you?" he asked, suspicious.

Adam snorted out a laugh at that, but Joe looked on, dead serious, so he seemed to recollect himself quickly, and said very seriously, if clearly confused:

"No, I don't."

"Last time," Joe explained, and maybe he was being cruel; but he had a right to protect himself; Alexa hadn't stood a chance, and he thought she'd been happier for it, but he knew what he was getting into – or, more accurately, he knew how much he _didn't_ know. "You went for someone who looked your age." Or rather, someone younger; Adam Pierson had been twenty-four when he'd first joined the Watchers.

"Yes, it's not a rule," Adam said carefully, like Joe was being strange and likely to be spooked. And Joe knew it wasn't; and he was pushing fifty, not, say, eighty; but immortals weren't that different from mortals in some respects; there were many who stayed with their mortal partner to the bitter end, but fewer who started a relationship with someone who wasn't as young as they so often seemed. "And you look great."

Five thousand years, and completely rubbish at flirting. Or maybe that was on purpose; you never knew, with Methos.

He took a deep breath. Just supposing, for a moment...

"Bretagne?"

"Oh, we can do something else, if you want," Adam said.

"You know I can't very well do any climbing over rocks?"

Not true: he would do climbing over rocks; but it wouldn't be much of a vacation.

"Yes." Adam squinted at him, a little shiftily. "To be honest, I'm mostly looking for an excuse to be alone. And, speaking of alone," he went on quickly, "I know I said no details, but it'd be helpful to be forewarned about anyone who could know me being in the region. We'd be taking my car, and if I lost my head during the trip, that would be – impractical."

Joe ignored him. This would truly be taking getting involved with the immortals you were supposed to watch from a distance to a whole new level. He wasn't even sure if he – well, he was a lot fonder of Methos than he probably should be, that much he knew, and one could go from there. But –

"I don't know about this."

"Give it a try," Adam pushed on, leaning forwards.

He was close, eyes trained on him, and Joe wondered when the acute awareness of the immortal's body had started; long after the ease had settled in, going through, an unobtrusive sort of desire, denial of which wasn't really painful. Maybe it was even part of his fascination with _them_ , as a whole, not Methos, there simply because Methos was one of the few he couldn't just go look up on in a database, and that made it less wrong, on a personal level, deep as the betrayal on a professional one was.

Only, most probably, trying to blind out Methos as a friend was something he'd done in retrospective _after_ bits of the oldest immortal's past that didn't involve funny anecdotes and boastful important relations had come to light. Joe hadn't felt betrayed like MacLeod had, not exactly; part of him hadn't even been that shocked, even if it wasn't anything he'd expected; he'd just briskly remembered what a good idea distance could be.

It hadn't worked.

There was an easy smile still playing on the edge of Adam's lips, but the look in his eyes, close up, was intense, insistent, and might almost have made him look as old as he was if there was any measure of comparison. He could remember Methos at his trial: passionate, whole, desperate, and not very effective. It'd been endearing.

"Fine," he said.

The smile he got in return was luminous, and you wouldn't believe what a jerk Methos could be from looking at him now, all comfortable, slightly surprised happiness. The light was so that tiny bits of wool were clearly standing out on his sweater; Joe knew how soft those were, like a surrounding blanked. If they'd been alone right then, he'd have reached out.

"Great!" Adam declared, and his eyes wandered over his face to his hands slowly, as if reading his thoughts.

"You know I can't just leave on a whim?"

"Oh, that's fine. Just make arrangements. And maybe we could go for dinner. Or stay here and get drunk."

"I'm working."

" _I'll_ get drunk then."

"You're just here for the free drinks, aren't you?"

Adam smiled again, and Joe thought he could get used to this level of implied "your very existence makes my life better" being directed at him. Adam was a bit of a sap, really.

"Something like that."


End file.
